Roblightbody dot com
  • Home
    • What's New?
    • About Rob >
      • QE2 Talks & speaker
    • Contact
  • Rob's Blog
  • Gadgets
  • Ocean Liners
    • Queen Mary 2 >
      • QM2 News in service
      • QM2 News (When New)
      • QM2 News (Pre Float-out) >
        • My Travels
      • QM2 Reviews
      • QM2 A Ship of Superlative Comparisons
    • Queen Elizabeth 2 >
      • QE2 in Dubai (QE2 Today)
      • QE2 Forum (link)
      • My own QE2 Story >
        • My QE2 Photos
        • 2008 Stephen Payne QE2 Lecture
        • 2008 QE2 Last Thoughts
        • 2008 QE2 Clyde Farewell
        • 2008 August QE2 Cruise
        • 2007 December QE2 Cruise
        • 2007 September QE2 Clyde
        • 2005 August QE2 Queensferry
        • 2003 June QE2 Queensferry
        • 1987 QE2 April Bremerhaven >
          • QE2 April 1987 Exterior Photos
          • QE2 April 1987 Interior Photos
      • QE2 News >
        • QE2 Dubai News (2008 to 2015) >
          • Fears grow over bid to turn QE2 into a hotel in Dubai
        • QE2 News 2008
        • QE2 Sold to Dubai Articles (2007)
        • QE2 News 2007
        • QE2 News 2006
        • QE2 News 2002 to 2005
        • QE2 News 1998 to 2001
      • QE2's Name
      • QE2 1987 Rebirth
      • QE2 Reviews 1997 to 2007
      • Speed Queen
      • QE2 Storm Photos
      • QE2 1975 Guide
      • 1969 Shipshapes
      • QE2 Sydney 2006
      • QE2 Cutaways
      • QE2 in 1969
      • QE2 Fuel Economy
      • QE2 Facts
      • Bridgecam Snaps
      • QE2 1995 Freak Wave
      • QE2 Bridge View
    • SS France >
      • SS France Swan Song (2001)
      • 2006 Finalé >
        • Telegraph April 2006
        • Miami Herald
        • AP News May 2006
        • Justin Huggler Article
        • BBC News June 2006
        • July 2006 (MSNBC)
      • Scrapping Allowed (2007)
    • United States >
      • Maiden Voyage
      • NCL Buys SS United States
    • Queen Elizabeth
    • Queen Mary >
      • No rushing Churchill and his ship of state
      • RMS Queen Mary News >
        • 2007 Fate of rusting Queen Mary in the balance
        • 2006 Queen Marys Meet
        • 2004 As ship and work of art, the QM still an original
        • 2001 Is Queen Mary seaworthy?
        • 2000 Sir John Brown Dies
        • 1998 - Queen of Kitsch
    • Normandie
    • Lusitania & Mauritania
    • Aquitania >
      • Aquitania Emails
    • Other Liners >
      • Transvaal Castle
      • Saxonia
      • Ivernia
      • Caronia
  • Cars
    • Classic Mini >
      • My Classic Minis
      • History >
        • End of Mini >
          • FT Sep 2000
          • Glasgow Herald
          • BBC News
          • Autocar March 2000
        • Sexist Adverts
        • John Cooper Dies
      • Brochures
      • My Archive
      • The MPi Minis >
        • Official Launch Documents
        • Classic Mini Postcards
        • MPI Mini Colours and trim, 1997 onwards
        • 1998 - Examples of MPI changes from SPI
        • 1998 MPI Mini Price List
        • Extracts from the 1996 Brochure launching the 1997 model year Minis
      • SPI Mini ACR2 Fault Code Reader
    • First new MINI
    • Ford Puma
    • Mazda MX-5 Miata
    • Austin Princess
    • Favourite Cars
  • PS Waverley
  • Scotland
    • Jeely Piece Song
    • Flower of Scotland
    • Where's the Glasgow?
    • I Belong to Glasgow (link)
  • Chuckles
  • Cool Websites
Home > Ocean Liners > QE2 > QE2 News 2007 > What makes the QEII a legend among liners?

What makes the QEII a legend among liners?

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/09/2007

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/13/botha108.xml
Stephen Lamport reviews QE2: 40 Years Famous by Carol Thatcher

What man-made leviathan nearly 1,000 ft long can steam through the water at nearly 40 mph, every day using more than 1,000 tonnes of water, 3,000 eggs, 2,500 tea bags, 200 bottles of Champagne and 40 gallons of spirits, and each year consuming more than 135,000 bottles of wine and 150 miles of clingfilm?

What ship has sailed 5.5 million miles - 11 times to the Moon and back - made more than 800 Atlantic crossings, uses a litre of fuel to push herself 11 feet, and houses the largest floating library in the world?
 
The answer is the QE2, Cunard's longest-serving ship. This book is a celebration of the 40 years of what Carol Thatcher calls "the most famous ship in existence", and whose birthday falls on September 20.

The figures are staggering. But this is also a ship whose history has been far from untroubled and uncontroversial. All celebrities are potential victims of the passing fashions that create them. The achievement of the QE2 is that she has weathered the mishaps and criticisms, has renewed and reburnished herself, and has acquired a reputation of such long-term credit that she has continued to flourish notwithstanding a succession of tricky passages.

The problems started even before her birth. As Thatcher makes clear, the QE2 was conceived in uncertainty. The early 1960s were bad years for the passenger ships business. Cunard's Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were consistently losing money. Shareholders were unhappy at plans to build what might have proved another commercial disaster. The decision to build was eventually taken by a whisker.

Construction seems to have been something of a nightmare. The John Brown yard in Clydebank was constantly beset by labour issues. "Squirrelling", as pilfering is known in the trade, was endemic and at one point some of the shipworkers were apparently stealing from the ship faster than the yard could build her.

And the name itself is a story of the unexpected. Cunard, in the greatest possible secrecy, finally chose Queen Elizabeth. But when the Queen launched the ship on that sunny September afternoon in 1967, she herself named it Queen Elizabeth the Second.

The QE2 was finally handed over, six months late, in April 1969, at a cost of just under £29 million - huge at the time, modest now. Since then, she has rarely been out of the news, and has consistently confounded the City analysts who, even as she entered service, thought she would be better mothballed.

She was the largest ship ever to pass through the Panama Canal on her first world cruise in 1975 - where there was less than a foot to spare on each side of the ship as she squeezed through the canal locks.

She was the victim of a ransom demand in 1972 made by, as it turned out, a New York shoe salesman, which saw four British bomb disposal experts parachuted on to the ship to search for bombs - the real-life forerunner of Richard Harris's Juggernaut.

She was a troop carrier to South Georgia during the Falklands war, a role for which she was converted in less than a week and which the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher said gave her a genuinely sleepless night. In 1995, the QE2 withstood a 95ft storm wave breaking across her bow during Hurricane Luis.

There has been a continuing catalogue of maritime mishaps: jellyfish fouling the ship's engines and causing her to drift helplessly towards the rocks off Jamaica; a 60ft whale impaled on her bow entering Lisbon; running on to the rocks near Martha's Vineyard.

And an endless procession of dry-dock maintenance and refits, often going over time and resulting in cancelled cruises, disgruntled passengers and awful publicity. Yet this unique lady somehow sails through it all with her reputation sometimes dented, but never apparently undimmed.

This is a great story rather than a great book. It is not for the coffee table, though this is probably the intended destination. The pictures are too disappointing and the format too unexciting. The text is too much a catalogue of refits, onboard personalities and semi-technical description to do real justice to the essential romance of this magical subject.

I yearned for more of the colour and less of the publicity handout. And yet the greatness of the ship still captivates.

But there is a final poignancy to the story when, in May 2004, the status of Cunard flagship finally passed from the QE2 to the newly arrived Queen Mary 2. The photographs of them together are perhaps the best in the book.

I suspect there will be many like me who, if they dip into this book, will reach that concluding iconic picture of the two Queens together in Sydney Harbour feeling a similar sense of nostalgic longing.

Sections

Rob's Blog
​Gadget Reviews

Ships

PS Waverley
Queen Mary 2
Queen Elizabeth 2
RMS Queen Elizabeth
RMS Queen Mary
More Liners

Cars

Classic Mini
New MINI (2001)
Mazda Miata MX-5
Wedge Princess
Ford Puma
Other Favourites

Everything Else

Whats New
About Rob
Contact Rob
Chuckles
Cool Sites